Do you know where this is?

The three-story house on the right has an eerie, gothic quality, deserving of a Halloween haunted house destination , instead of the historic designation it might have earned had it survived the realignment of its Worcester neighborhood.

But in its heyday, it was one of Worcester's grand homes, a symbol of the prosperity deriving from the mid- to late-19th-century education and technology.

The coming of the Blackstone Canal and the railroads in the 1800s brought a way to get to this inland city that made it possible for commerce to flourish. Money earned from those industrial endeavors showed in most gracious form in homes like this. They were even grander looking when bookended by similarly fine homes on either side, not strips of retail stores.

In 1954, when this photo was taken, the era of such majestic homes had long passed in this neighborhood. This home, and many like it that survived, had become many homes, as its rooms that once served one family were broken into apartments that served many families or single tenants. This home had been chopped up into three apartments.

That it survived this long is a testament to its strong bones, but even structural integrity couldn't save it from 20th-century commerce. When this picture was taken, the furniture store on the left had bought the lot and was planning to — and eventually did — demolish the home to expand its one-story, street-level operation.